Since McLean County entered an intergovernmental agreement with Bloomington and Normal in 2016 to place a 1% sales tax in the city and town for mental health and public safety purposes over the next 30 years, millions have been generated — and millions have also gone unspent.

Vocal elected officials have called out the county for lacking transparency related to the fund, which they say should have more formal updates since it’s public money. County officials argue the balance of funds and spending was never secret: The county spent around $15.8 million out of the fund between 2016 and 2024, and the balance is roughly $19 million, according to a recent estimate from County Administrator Cassy Taylor, who provided the data to WGLT over email upon request.

While that may seem like a large reserve, Taylor said only around $4 million is unspoken for and is being saved for mental health-specific programs and initiatives. The remainder is stored for jail debt payments and a multi-million dollar database overhaul that should improve how the county tracks people who frequently interact with law enforcement and hospitals, among other improvements.

“Outside the county, someone might — looking in — say, ‘Wow, they’re not spending the money on mental health,’” Taylor said. “We absolutely have plans for that money. It’s just that we are being fiscally responsible and using the funds in the right order.”

Spending breakdown

WGLT requested spreadsheets detailing spending for the four buckets outlined in the shared sales tax fund — jail debt, criminal justice needs, an integrated justice system database and mental health initiatives — and the county provided. Data shows the majority of funds — by several million — have gone toward paying off jail debt. As part of the fund’s creation, the municipalities agreed to put $1.1 million per year toward the service starting in 2017. An additional roughly $5.6 million has been spent on the criminal justice system, just under $5.2 million on behavioral health and about $535,000 has gone toward the database project.

Spending didn’t start until a year into the fund’s creation when money became available. Spending on mental health services came in 2019, and the majority of that bucket — around $3.5 million — has gone toward employee costs in the Department of Behavioral Health Coordination.

As for money directly spent on non-county initiatives to treat community mental health, roughly $1 million has gone to community partners. In 2023, the Regional Office of Education opened Bridge Academy and the McLean County Center for Human Services took over the Triage Center and rebranded it as Behavioral Health Urgent Care. In 2024, YWCA Stepping Stones and Lifelong Access were given grants to support operations and expanded services.

Difficult to measure success

Marita Landreth is the county’s director of behavioral health coordination. Landreth said at face value, the money spent on community initiatives to improve mental health outcomes seems low — and it is, compared to the overall amount spent — but their concern and that of others involved is about the impact of services. Spending, Landreth said, is not always an indicator of progress.

The county has still not figured out the best way to measure the success of programs. It’s been a goal for about as long as the Mental Health and Public Safety Fund has existed, but Landreth said it is not easy to do in behavioral health.

“The return on investment is not as clean cut as it would be for a really standard business where you’re putting in money and you’re getting a product, because at this point, we’re talking about human systems, we’re talking about health care, we’re talking about longer-term investments that are harder for us to measure over time,” Landreth said.

To an extent, Landreth said the public has to trust that the government and the community health care leaders it consults with are acting in their best interest.

“Especially at this point in the game,” Landreth said. “Like getting a behavioral health urgent care is just a service that we need, and as of right now, it’s the only one of those services that we have.”

Without trust, Landreth said it becomes nearly impossible to advance the current behavioral health care network in McLean County. The work being done and that is being worked toward is systemic, she added, and it can’t happen without public buy-in.

Increasing transparency

At the same time, she said she agrees there have been some issues with — or at least a lack of consistency in — sharing information regarding the fund to the community at large.

Kevin McCarthy, a Normal Town Council member and self-described “steward” of sales tax funds for the town, said — the way he sees it — the county, Bloomington and Normal are on the cutting edge of behavioral health, with no model for what they are doing and no clear way to report to the public.

Plus, he said these are three different agencies with their own strategies and methods for keeping financial information, trying to get on the same page. In his experience, McCarthy said the county is less detailed in its expense reporting. Yet, McCarthy said the public has not asked for the data in formats the county isn’t already keeping.

“Frankly, nobody’s ever asked for [more detail],” he said. “So I don’t know that we have transparency issues. … I think we just have some, you know, what makes sense to release to the public in a format that is digestible for the public?”

Jeffrey Smudde

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WGLT file

Part of the reason there perhaps has not been a clear or detailed information-sharing process, Landreth said, is that there has been a great deal of staff turnover — even in their own role. Landreth became director of behavioral health coordination in 2024 and is the fourth person to hold the position.

That’s made it hard even for Landreth to learn the history of the tax, but they said good work is still being done even without precise data showing it.

“I want to make sure that people know that we have high standards for the care that we give for people, and that especially going forward, that we’re being very thoughtful about, about the decisions that we make, about how money gets spent,” Landreth said.

Spending down the $4 million in reserves for behavioral health initiatives has become a recent priority for the newly formed advisory committee that makes recommendations to the county board on spending appropriations for the Mental Health and Public Safety Fund. This year the county has budgeted for spending that will likely dip into reserves, but only by around $300,000. Landreth said it’s about striking a balance.

“Making sure that we’re not sitting on money, that we spend the reserves in a stable way, while, again, also making sure that it’s money well spent,” Landreth said.

Emily Bollinger

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WGLT

Reasons for the reserves

Concerning the $12 million in reserves for the Integrated Justice Information System [IJIS] database update, Taylor said the county is intentionally setting the money aside because it knows there will be costs down the line. Projected costs are around $30 million. Taylor said the county also had American Rescue Plan Act [ARPA] dollars from the COVID-19 pandemic that could be applied to the effort and that needed to be spent on a deadline compliant with the federal government’s restrictions.

“The shared sales tax dollars do not have an expiration date,” Taylor said to explain why the reserves have gotten so high. “The ARPA dollars do.”

By the time the current intergovernmental agreement that created the Mental Health and Public Safety Fund expires in 2036, Taylor said she expects the fund to have a zero-sum balance. Taylor said it’s also always possible that the agreement gets an extension — but talks about that probably won’t happen for at least another decade.

In the meantime, Taylor, McCarthy and Landreth all said the focus is on perfecting the systems in place to get the community the best possible care and improve overall behavioral health outcomes. Landreth said they hope the public understands this.

“Obviously, we’ve got a long way to go,” Landreth said. “There are plenty of gaps that people could talk about as far as services go, but the amount of collaboration that we have between private and public entities is something that’s really hard to find in a lot of other communities.”